Alright, I think I'm finally close to getting sprite directions down.

Is this close to looking okay? 1: 2: Panel: Advice?

[EDIT:] Made some quick progress. Don't know if it's any better.

Here's some further updates:

1)

2)

3)

Spent the night reworking some stuff, and found that shading the shoulder area gave it a better look. Still preferred the arm movement on the original, however I'm trying to work on adding a back swing to the 3rd frame like the one in your animation. The obstructed arm in my animation only swings forward, but I need to find someway to make it swing backwards as your sprite clearly points out. Also, the standing frame needs work. Yours looks really good and I wanted to use it but it doesn't blend well with the other frames on my animation when I try to combine them. I'll probably find someway to add in these edits sometime in the near future, but for right now I'm pretty content with the result on the East moving animation.

What I'm having problems with now is a North moving animation. Feet are primarily the problem, but arm motion is another too. Any suggestions?

The feet for north should act similar for the feet for south. The other animations look very nice and complete. I think it's time you move on from sprite animation and start other aspects of your game or nothing will get finished. I know since I've spent so much time reworking the sprites for my Blockman game I kinda gave up on it. I still want to complete it one of these days, but I've just spent so much time back and forth on the project I lose the drive to continue.

I thought so too, was one of the first things I tried but the feet for the north animation doesn't implement well in the south animation. I'm guessing the reason why is because the feet in the north animation has that "sliding" effect, however it's not very noticeable I don't think unless you're inspecting it up close, but that may have something to do with the reason it doesn't transition well over into the south animation. And thanks man, I'm pretty content with the east and south bound animations actually, just gotta work on the north but I'm a little lost on how to so far.

As for finishing the project, I kinda fell in love more so with the process more so than with the aspect of actually getting it done. I think turning it into a goal-driven project is what tends to steer me away and creates frustration rather than understanding it as an art and using patience before progress. My mental health isn't that good these days so focusing that intensely on the project wouldn't be a good decision, even though I would like to more than anything else right now being the amount of time it has taken me.

To tell the truth there isn't much left to finish, just scripting the battle system and random map generation, both of which I'd rather implement after a decent amount of artwork has been done otherwise i'm just putting off the thing that's going to frustrate me the most in the long run (the artwork). Not to mention I would be working on those other aspects of the game already if the pixel art community had a fair amount of tutoring or cooperation. I'm not going to dish on them, but every one of them tend to be pretty self-centered and hard to get participation from unless you got money to burn. I could say more, but what it comes down to is the art has to get done sooner or later and I know nobody is going to pitch in so I'm having to make slow progress by myself. Putting it off for last is just going to end up with me jumping around the internet asking for help and getting no results as I am now, except it'll then be with the frustrating quality of so near finishing yet almost impossible to do with my limited skillset. I don't know if I'm explaining correctly or that anyone would understand this.

Re north-facing walking - try using the various Chrono Trigger walk cycles for examples of decent posture in a north-facing walk.